...And tropical forest foils.Tropical forests are famous for their biological diversity, much of it undescribed, but the real mother lode of new tropical species is underfoot, not overhead, according to an analysis of soil microbes from the eastern Amazon Basin in Brazil. Rather than growing and then counting species and numbers of bacteria from a soil sample in the lab, agronomists James Borneman and Eric W. Triplett of the University of Wisconsin-Madison “University of Wisconsin” redirects here. For other uses, see University of Wisconsin (disambiguation). A public, land-grant institution, UW-Madison offers a wide spectrum of liberal arts studies, professional programs, and student activities. extracted DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. from samples of forested and deforested soil and analyzed 100 of the sequences they obtained. "The microbial diversity [from this snapshot] is immense," the team reports in the July Applied and Environmental Microbiology Applied and Environmental Microbiology is an academic journal published by the American Society for Microbiology. The title is commonly abbreviated AEM and the ISSN is 0099-2240 for the print version, and 1098-5336 for the electronic version. None of the sequences were duplicates, and none had been reported previously. Most of the sequences were related to those of bacteria such as Clostridium and Planctomyces, but 18 could not be assigned to any known bacterial group. Most of the novel sequences, presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. representing unknown microbes, came from the forested soils. Two sequences belong to microorganisms from the ancient and little-known domain of archaea archaea: see Archaebacteria. archaea A group of prokaryotes whose members differ from bacteria, the most prominent prokaryotes, in certain physical, physiological, and genetic features. The archaea may be aquatic or terrestrial microorganisms. (SN: 8/24/96, p. 116). |
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